Many people know that Cloudways and SiteGround are two popular hosting services, but only a few of them really know this fundamental difference: Cloudways is a VPS while SiteGround is a shared hosting.
Of course, there are many other differences between the two. In this post, I will elaborate on them and compare 8 most crucial areas.
My hope is that you will be able to make the best decision about which hosting service is more ideal to host your websites.
I myself have some WordPress projects hosted on both Cloudways and SiteGround so I will be very objective in this post.
Cloudways vs SiteGround: At a Glance
Before we step even further, you can take a look at the following table. I created this table to make it easy for you to compare the differences between Cloudways and SiteGround in 8 fundamental areas.
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting type | Cloud VPS | Shared hosting |
| Scalability | Can add CPU and RAM | Must buy new plan |
| Resources limits | RAM, storage and CPU | RAM, storage, RAM and inodes |
| Data centers | 40+ | 11 |
| Migration | 1 free then $25/site | $30/site |
| Main features | Isolated resources, firewall, SSL, multi-layer caching, PHP manager, FTP, SSH, automatic backup, staging, Git, CDN | File manager, firewall, SSL, caching, PHP manager, FTP, SSH, automatic backup, staging, Git, web mail, CDN |
| Support | Ticket, live chat, private Slack | AI chat, live chat (although barely accessible) |
| Pricing | Starts from $11/month | Starts from $24.99/month |
Please note that both Cloudways and SiteGround offer several hosting types. Cloudways, for instance, also offers managed hosting service for WordPress other than VPS.
On the other hand, SiteGround also offers cloud VPS other than shared hosting.
What I compare in this post is the main hosting service offered by the two.
1. Hosting Type: Cloudways is a VPS, SiteGround is a Shared Hosting
Since Cloudways is a VPS, you will have isolated resources for your websites (called applications in Cloudways). SiteGround doesn’t offer isolated resources because it is a shared hosting service.
Many people think that Cloudways and SiteGround are WordPress-only hosting services. No. They are not.
While most users may use them to host WordPress websites, they are not built specifically for WordPress. Instead, you can also use them to host other applications. More specifically PHP-based applications.
Apart from WordPress, you can use Cloudways to host Magento, Laravel, and custom PHP applications.
For SiteGround, you can use it to host Drupal, Joomla, PrestaShop, OpenCart and several other PHP-based applications — other than WordPress.
SiteGround integrates its control panel with Softaculous to allow you install those applications in just a few clicks. So basically, any application supported by Softaculous can be hosted on SiteGround.
2. Scalability: Cloudways is More Flexible than SiteGround
Cloudways offers a feature called Vertical Scaling to allow you to increase your server resources flexibly. You can increase a certain resource only on your server.
For instance, you can increase RAM while preserving the current storage. And vice versa.
Apart from increasing hosting resources, the Vertical Scaling feature also allows you to decrease the hosting resources if your traffic drops unexpectedly.
The best part, Cloudways adopts a pay-as-you-go pricing model where you only pay for the resources you use. The lower the resources you use, the less money you need to pay each month.
SiteGround doesn’t offer a flexible scalability like Cloudways. If you need more resources due to traffic spikes, for instance, the only way to increase your hosting resources is by upgrading to a higher hosting plan (aka buying a new plan).
3. Resources Limits: SiteGround Has More Limitation than Cloudways
Both Cloudways and SiteGround offer hosting plans that say that you can add unlimited websites although in reality, there are some limitations you have to deal with.
The Cloudways’ Micro plan, for instance. It says that you can add unlimited websites. However, since it has only 25GB of storage, chances are you won’t be able to add a new website once you already have about 158 websites.
SiteGround has even more resources limits than Cloudways. In SiteGround, every file is counted. Apart from storage, you also have inode limits.
The more websites you add to your account (and the more posts you publish on each site), the larger the number of your inodes will be.
Unlike SiteGround, Cloudways doesn’t care how many files you upload. As long as your storage is still available, you can always upload a new file.
Does inode limit really matter?
Yes. Especially if you often publish image-heavy blog posts. Once you have reached the maximum number of inodes, you won’t be able to upload a new image and other type of files on your website. Which is not good if you are a blogger.
4. Data Centers: Cloudways Offers More Data Centers than SiteGround
Be it Cloudways or SiteGroud offers cloud hosting infrastructure.
The hosting service of SiteGround is powered by Google Cloud. You have 11 different data center locations to choose from for your websites.
Unlike SiteGround, Cloudways allows you to pick a cloud platform to power your server instead of just Google Cloud.
There are five cloud platforms you can choose from when adding a server on your Cloudways account:
- DigitalOcean
- Vultr
- Linode
- Google Cloud
- AWS
In Cloudways, the number of data centers varied, depending on the cloud platform you choose. If you prefer DigitalOcean, you have 9 different data centers. If you prefer Google Cloud, you have 28 different data centers.
Here are the details of the number of data centers in Cloudways on each cloud platform:
- DigitalOcean: 9
- Vultr: 30
- Linode: 25
- Google Cloud: 28
- AWS: 28
5. Migration: Both Charge Migration Fee
If you already have a website or two and plan to migrate to Cloudways or SiteGround, then this area might matter the most for you.
Both Cloudways and SiteGround offer a migration service, but it is not available for free. Or at least not completely free.
Cloudways offers a free migration service, but only for one website. If you want to migrate multiple websites, you need to pay $25 per site.
What about SiteGround?
SiteGround doesn’t offer free migration service at all. You need to pay $30 per site if you want the SiteGround team to migrate your websites to its hosting service.
If you don’t want to spend money on site migration, Cloudways offers a free plugin called Cloudways WordPress Migrator which you can use to migrate your sites without downtime. It is super easy to use.
Similarly, SiteGround offers a free plugin called SiteGround Migrator to make it easy for you to move your websites to its hosting service.
6. Hosting Features
File Access and Database Access: SiteGround Offers File Manager, Cloudways Only Provides FTP and SSH
File Access
SiteGround comes with a built-in file manager to make it easy for you to upload a file to the server or vice versa, to download a file from the server.
Cloudways doesn’t offer a file manager. Instead, it only provides FTP and SSH so that you will need an FTP client app if you wish a GUI-based file access.
Or, you can also install a plugin like Filester or WP File Manager if you really need a GUI solution for file access.
Database Access
In Cloudways, there are two options to access your database. If you are familiar with CLI, you can access your database by logging in to your server and using SQL command line to show your tables or perform other operations per you need.
If you prefer a GUI solution, Cloudways offers a custom database manager similar to phpMyAdmin.
In SiteGround, you can access your database via phpMyAdmin. This is the only way that SiteGround offers to access databases.
Security: Cloudways Offers More Security Features than SiteGround
The default security features offered by Cloudways and SiteGround are not as advanced as Rocket.net and Rapyd Cloud. Both Rocket.net and Rapyd Cloud come with a malware scanner by default.
Cloudways and SiteGround also offer a malware scanner, but you need to enable an add-on to use it, which requires an extra monthly fee.
Cloudways charges $4 per month per site for the malware scanner. While SiteGround charges $4.99 per month per site.
To block unwanted traffic, both Cloudways and SiteGround offer a firewall which you can use to block traffic by IP address and country. Cloudways is better than SiteGround in this particular area.
Cloudways’ firewall tracks requests of IP addresses every 30 seconds. If the request count exceeds the limit, it graylists the IPs and redirects them to an Anti-Bot challenge to prevent server downtime.
On manual blocking, Cloudways’ firewall offers more options than SiteGround’s.
Cloudways comes with an extra security feature that is not available in Cloudways: vulnerability scanner. This feature ensures your WordPress core, themes, and plugins are up to date to minimize exploitation.
Here is the list of security features available in Cloudways and SiteGround:
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Firewall | ✅ | ✅ |
| Malware scanner | Requires add-on. $4/mo/site | Requires add-on. $4.99/mo/site |
| Vulnerability scanner | ✅ | ❌ |
| SSL | ✅ | ✅ |
Backup: Cloudways Allows You to Download Backup Files for Free, SiteGround Requires Extra Fee
Cloudways and SiteGround offer both automatic backup and manual backup. With automatic backup, you can easily restore a certain version of your website in case the current version is experiencing an issue due to inappropriate changes or other causes.
Both Cloudways and SiteGround allow you to restore your website in just a few clicks.
The two also allow you to perform a manual backup. However, SiteGround doesn’t allow you to download the backup file for free, which is ridiculous.
Cloudways, although the process is a bit complex, allows you to download a backup file for free.
After enabling the Local Backup option on your server, you will find a new folder called local_backups on each application. Every time you perform a manual backup, the backup file will be stored here.
To download a backup file from your server, you can use an FTP client like FileZille and Transmit.
Optimization: Both Offer an Optimization Plugin, But Cloudways Has Better CDN
In Cloudways and SiteGround, every website is pre-installed with an optimization plugin. Cloudways has Breeze, while SiteGround has Speed Optimizer (formerly known as SG Optimizer).
Those plugins offer features like caching functionality, file optimization, ability to disable unnecessary WordPress core features to save CPU usage, etc.
Both Cloudways and SiteGround also offer dynamic caching, which is super useful if you run an e-commerce and membership site.
In Cloudways, dynamic caching is powered by Redis. While in SiteGround, dynamic caching is powered by Memcached.
CDN
SiteGround offers CDN as a core feature, but it is not enabled by default. You can enable it from the Speed menu on the control panel. This feature is free, but limited to 10GB.
If you need more CDN bandwidth, you will need to pay an extra fee of $14.99 per month per website. SiteGround uses its own CDN platform, which has only 14 server locations.
Meanwhile, Cloudways offers CDN as an add-on instead of a core feature. However, it is way cheaper than SiteGround’s. You only need to pay $4.99 per month per site with the bandwidth of 100GB.
In Cloudways, CDN is powered by Cloudflare Enterprise, which has way more server locations than SiteGround’s. Cloudflare has 200+ CDN server locations worldwide.
Plus, you will be able to enjoy extra features like image optimization, managed firewall and DDos protection.
Development: Cloudways Has Better Features for Developers than SiteGround
If you are a developer, the option is clear: Cloudways.
Cloudways has more features aimed specifically at developers. Including Git, staging environment, and WP CLI.
For Git, you can even integrate your application with GitHub.
Git is also available in SiteGround, but you need to use the highest hosting plan. In Cloudways, Git is available on all plans.
The staging environment of Cloudways is also better than SiteGround.
First, you can push the changes you made on the staging site to the live site. You can even exclude certain files when pushing the changes.
Second, you can pull the changes from the live site to the staging site, which is super useful to get the latest version of your website before you make changes on the staging site to test a new feature, a new design, etc.
Unlike Cloudways, SiteGround doesn’t offer a feature to pull the changes from the live site. If you want to make changes on the staging site from the latest version of your site, you need to create a new staging site.
If you are a CLI guy, Cloudways also offers WP CLI which you can access via SSH. SiteGround says that it also has CLI accessible via SSH too. But when I tried to login, my access got denied.
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Git | Available on all plans | Requires the highest plan |
| WP CLI | ✅ | ❌ |
| PHP Manager | ✅ | ✅ |
| Staging | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cron job | ✅ | ✅ |
7. Support: Cloudways Offers More Support Options than SiteGround
The other day, I moved a WordPress site to SiteGround. The site was infected by malware (before being moved). My hope was that I got a safer place for my website in SiteGround.
I thought that SiteGround offered a free malware removal. Turned, it didn’t. I was suggested to use its paid service to remove the malware.
After learning more about the service fee, I needed to pay $65 in order to get my malware removed by SiteGround.
For the same service, Cloudways charges only $4. This already includes malware scanning, database protection and phishing protection (learn more here).
What I am trying to say here is that SiteGround support sucks. Tom Dupuis from Online Media Masters also admits that SiteGround support has degraded.
At this time, SiteGround uses GhatGPT-based AI chatbot to handle support. As you can guess, this LLM-based support is barely usable. Most of the time, you are forced to fix all of your issues yourself.
SiteGround offers live chat, indeed. Yet it takes a hundred clicks to access it. Which is super frustrating.
How about Cloudways?
Cloudways support is not excellent, but it is still better than SiteGround.
Cloudways offers live chat support powered by Intercom. It also adds LLM to the chatting system. You will be greeted by an AI bot initially, but you can easily bypass it by saying something like “can I talk to a human”?.
You will then be greeted by a human and you can start to share your issues with him/her.
Apart from live chat, Cloudways also allows you to get help via a ticket. A Facebook group is also available although I am not sure you will use it to get help.
If you are okay with spending extra money, you can also get help via a private Slack channel.
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Live chat | Instant access | Requires a hundred clicks! |
| Ticket | ✅ | ❌ |
| Slack channel | ✅ (paid add-on) | ❌ |
8. Pricing: Cloudways Offers Pay-as-you-go Model, SiteGround offers Fixed Model
Like most hosting services, SiteGround offers a discounted price on registration but price goes up sky high on renewals.
Also, discount is only available if you subscribe to a hosting plan with a yearly contract. If you subscribe with a monthly contract, you will be charged a normal price.
Unlike SiteGround, Cloudways doesn’t directly offer a discount, but you can still get a discount via several legal methods. One of which is via the following coupon code.
Use this coupon code to get a 10% discount in Cloudways for three months.
Coupon code: WPBDEAL
use coupon code
Cloudways itself adopts a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Meaning that you are not tied to a fixed contract like SiteGround. You will only be charged for the resources you use on your server during a certain period of time (monthly bill still apply for long-term usage).
You can even monitor the estimated monthly bill via its real time billing system.
The best part about Cloudways is that it offers a 3-day trial without credit card to allow you to give the service a test drive before using it to host your actual sites.
The Verdict: Who is the Winner?
SiteGround used to be a good hosting service, but its quality has degraded these days. Its AI-first support move has made everything even worse.
Cloudways, on the other hand, is getting better and better. Extra technical knowledge is required to use Cloudways. That’s true. But its new, cleaner control panel makes your job of managing your sites way easier.
Also, Cloudways offers isolated resources which are more reliable to run business sites. Scaling up is also easier in Cloudways as you don’t need to buy a new plan like SiteGround.
Cloudways pricing is even better than SiteGround. No classic discounting trick. Everything is transparent.
So, the winner is crystal clear here: Cloudways.
Cloudways is not a perfect service, however. There are some areas where it needs to improve.
It would be super nice if some features are offered as core features instead of add-ons. This may affect Cloudways core pricing, but if the prices are still reasonable, I think it’s not a big problem.
Pros and Cons of Cloudways
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Faster and more reliable | No file manager |
| Isolated resources | Requires extra steps to launch a brand new site |
| Better support | No email hosting |
| Flexible pricing | |
| Easier to scale up | |
| Better security by default | |
| Better features for developers | |
| More data centers |
Pros and Cons of SiteGround
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Built-in file manager | Terrible support |
| Domain registration | More limited resources |
| More beginner-friendly | Fixed contract |
| Email hosting | Discount is only available on yearly contract |
| Higher renewal prices | |
| Extra services are more expensive | |
| Fewer data centers |
